英文美文励志小故事品析

2017-03-03

英文美文励志小故事品析

A Ball to Roll Around

滚球

by Robert G Allman

罗伯特·G·奥尔曼

I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what red color is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity can do strange things to people.

4岁那年在大西洋城，我从货场一辆火车上摔下来，头先着地，于是双目失明。现在我已经32岁了。我还模糊地记得阳光是多么灿烂，红色是多么鲜艳。能恢复视觉固然好，但灾难也能对人产生奇妙的作用。

It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn’t been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply, otherwise. I don’t mean that I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left.

有一天我突然想到，倘若我不是盲人，我或许不会变得像现在这样热爱生活。现在我相信生活，但我不能肯定如果自己是明眼人，会不会像现在这样深深地相信生活。这并不意味着我宁愿成为盲人，而只是意味着失去视力使我更加珍惜自己其他的能力。

Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more meaningful his own private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was bewildered and afraid. But I was lucky. My parents and my teachers saw something in me —a potential to live, you might call it ——which I didn’t see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

我认为，生活要求人不断地自我调整以适应现实。人愈能及时地进行调整，他的个人世界便愈有意义。调整决非易事。我曾感到茫然害怕，但我很幸运，父母和老师在我身上发现了某种东西——可以称之为活下去的潜力吧——而我自己却没有发现。他们激励我誓与失明拼搏到底。

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was basic. If I hadn’t been able to do that, I would have collapsed and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self-confidence that helps me down a unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person that somewhere in the sweeping, intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

我必须学会的最艰难的一课就是相信自己，这是基本条件。如做不到这一点，我的精神就会崩溃，只能坐在前门廊的摇椅中度过余生。相信自己并不仅仅指支持我独自走下陌生的楼梯的那种自信，那是一部分。我指的是大事：是坚信自己虽然有缺陷，却是一个真正的有进取心的人;坚信在芸芸众生错综复杂的格局当中，自有我可以安身立命的一席之地。

It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball, I thought he was mocking me and I was hurt. “I can’t use this,” I said. “Take it with you,” he urged me,” and roll it around. “The words stuck in my head.” Roll it around!” By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

我花了很长时间才树立并不断加强这一信念。这要从最简单的事做起。有一次一个人给我一个室内玩的棒球，我以为他在嘲笑我，心里很难受。“我不能使这个。”我说。“你拿去，”他竭力劝我，“在地上滚。”他的话在我脑子里生了根。“在地上滚!” 滚球使我听见它朝哪儿滚动。我马上想到一个我曾认为不可能达到的目标：打棒球。在费城的奥弗布鲁克盲人学校，我发明了一种很受人欢迎的棒球游戏，我们称它为地面球。

All my life I have set ahead of is a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.

我这一辈子给自己树立了一系列目标，然后努力去达到，一次一个。我必须了解自己能力有限，若开始就知道某个目标根本达不到却硬要去实现，那不会有任何好处，因为那只会带来失败的苦果。我有时也失败过，但一般来说总有进步。

经典的英文美文励志小故事

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Liberty

难民与自由

By James Carey

詹姆斯.B.凯里

Perhaps more than anything else in the world, I believe in liberty: liberty for myself, liberty for my fellow men.

也许在世界上我最信奉的是自由：自己的自由，同胞的自由。

I cannot forget the legend engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty on Bedlows Island in New York Harbor: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

我无法忘记纽约港自由岛上自由女神像底座上的文字：“给我你那疲惫、贫穷、蜷曲、渴望自由呼吸的身躯，可怜的被遗忘在你们海岸的人群。

Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. That is the voice of America.

交给我吧，那些无家可归、颠簸流离的人们;我在金色之门高举火炬。”那是美国的声音。

As one small part of it, one tiny decibel in its sound, I, as a free individual of America, believe in it.

作为它的一小部分，它声音中的一个分贝，我，美国的一个自由人，相信这声音。

It makes no boast of noble ancestry. On the contrary, it admits honestly that each of us in this country, with a possible and qualified exception of our native Indians, is a displaced person.

它没有炫耀高贵的祖先，反而坦率承认在这个国家，我们每个人都是被迫流落此处的难民，只有土著印第安人才可能有资格成为例外。

In a particular kind of way, the Indian was our first displaced person. If you and I did not come from abroad ourselves, our forefathers did. The scores that drove them was economic, political, or religious oppression.

从某种意义上讲，印第安人使我们的首批难民。如果你我本身不是移民，我们的祖先便是。经济、政治或宗教迫害的皮鞭将可怜的被遗弃的难民逼到生活的边缘。

Oppression has always strewn the shores of life with wretched human refuse. We who today are the proud people of a proud country are what might be called the reclaimed refuse of other lands.

而今，我们充满自豪，因为我们是这个值得骄傲的国家的公民，我们这些在异国遭到遗弃的人在这里获得了新生。

The fact that the flotsam and the jetsam, the persecuted and the pursued of all these other lands, the fact that they came here and, for the most part, successfully started life anew, this renews my faith in the resilience of a human individual and the dignity of man.

所有这些难民、遭受迫害和追捕的人从异国来到这里，大多数顺利地开始了新的生活。这一事实使我对人这一个体的活力和人类尊严的信念有了新的认识。

There are those who say we should be content with the material benefits we have accrued among ourselves. I cannot accept that for myself. A laboring man needs bread and butter, and cash to pay the rent.

有人说，我们应满足于自然增长的物质利益，我个人无法接受这一说法。劳动者需要面包和黄油，也要钱付房租.

But he would be a poor individual, indeed, if he were not able to furnish the vestibule of his mind and his soul with spiritual embellishments beyond the price of a union contract.

但如果他无法用联盟合约规定的价格之外的精神饰物装点心智和灵魂的门廊，他将是个真正的可怜虫。

I mean by this that I believe it is important for a man to discover, whether he is an electrical worker or an executive, that he is an individual with his own resources and a sense of the dignity of his own person and that of other men.

我的意思是我相信，对一个人来说，无论是个电工还是执行官，重要的是要认识到自己是一个拥有精神财富和尊严的人，是一个尊重他人尊严的人。

We are separate. We are collective. Man can be strong alone but not indomitable, in isolation. He has to belong to something, to realize he is not created separately or apart from the rest of mankind, whether he is an American or a Mohammedan.

我们既是分离的个体，又是集体的一员。人们单枪匹马时可以坚强有力，孤军作战时却容易击败。他必须有归属感，即认识到不管他是美国人还是穆斯林，他并非孤立存在或远离人类其他成员。

I am stirred by the abundance of the fields, the forest, the streams, and the natural resources they hold.

我们那广袤的土地、大片的森林、众多的溪流和它们丰富的自然资源让我激动

But do these things make me important? Have we wrought the miracle of America because of these riches we hold? I say, no.

然而，是那些资源才使我重要吗?我们是凭借那些财富在美国创造的奇迹吗?我要说：“不是。”

Our strength—and I can say my strength, too, because I am a part of this whole—lies in a fundamental belief in the validity of human rights. And I believe that a man who holds these rights in proper esteem is greater, whether he is recognized or not.

我们的力量--也可以说我的力量，因为我是这个整体的一份子--存在于一种最根本的信念，相信人权的有效性。我认为一个人如果恰当地尊重这些权力，不管他获得认可与否，都是伟大的。

As an individual, I must face the future with honesty and faith, in the goods things that have made us mighty. I must have confidence in myself, in others, and all men of goodwill everywhere, for freedom is the child of truth and confidence.

作为个人，我必须诚实地面对未来，并相信使我们强大的美好事物。我必须对自己、他人和任何地方有着善良意愿的人充满信心，因为自由是真理和信心的孩子。

关于英文美文励志小故事

Dreams Are the Stuff Life Is Made Of

梦想构造生活

by Carroll Carroll

卡洛.卡洛

I believe I'm a very lucky man.

我相信自己是一个幸运的人。

My entire life has been lived in the healthy area between too little and too much. I've never experienced financial or emotional insecurity, but everything I have, I've attained by my own work, not through indulgence, inheritance or privilege.

我的一生生活平稳，毫无波澜。我从未经历过经济或情感危机，但我拥有的一切并不是依靠溺爱、遗产或特权，而是通过我自己的努力工作得来的。

Never having lived by the abuses of any extreme, I've always felt that a workman is worthy of his hire, a merchant entitled to his profit, an artist to his reward.

生活中的我从不滥走极端，始终认为工人就应当工作，商人就应当获利，艺术家有权获取报酬。

As a result of all this, my bargaining bump may be a little underdeveloped, so I've never tried to oversell myself. And though I may work for less than I know I can get, I find that because of this, I'm never so afraid of losing a job that I'm forced to compromise with my principles.

正因如此，我讨价还价的能力没有丝毫长进，所以我从不试图过分吹嘘自己。尽管我知道自己的酬劳少于实际应得的，但我仍会继续工作。我发现，由此一来，我从未因害怕失业而做出任何违背原则的事。

Naturally in a life as mentally, physically, emotionally and financially fortunate as mine has been, a great many people have helped me. A few meant to, most did so by accident.

的确，像我这种在精神、身体、情感与经济上如此幸运的人，少不了很多人曾给予的帮助。有些帮助是刻意的，但大部分的则是偶然为之

I still feel I must reciprocate. This doesn't mean that I've dedicated my life to my fellow man. I'm not the type. But I do feel I should help those I'm qualified to help, just as I've been helped by others.

尽管如此，我依然认为必须报答他们。这并不是说我为同胞们奉献出了自己的一生，我也不是那样的人。但我觉得应该尽自己所能去帮助他人，就像别人帮助我一样。

What I'm saying now is, I feel, part of that pattern. I think everyone should, for his own sake, try to reduce to six hundred words the beliefs by which he lives - it's not easy - and then compare those beliefs with what he enjoys - not in real estate and money and goods, but in love, health, happiness and laughter.

我认为，现在所说的这些正是我信仰中的一部分。即使很难，但为了自身利益，每个人都应将生活的信仰缩减至600字，并将其与他所享有的东西作比较——不比拥有的房产、金钱和物品，而是比爱、健康、幸福与欢笑。

I don't believe we live our lives and then receive our reward or punishment in some afterlife. The life and the reward... The life and the punishment - these to me are one. This is my religion, coupled with the firm belief that there is Supreme Being who planned this world and runs it so that "no man is an island, entire of himself..." The dishonesty of any one man subverts all honesty. The lack of ethics anywhere adulterates the whole world's ethical content. In these - honesty and ethics - are, I think, the true spiritual values.

我不相信，今生的生活方式会在来世受到报应。生活与奖赏……生活与惩罚——对我而言，是同一回事。这就是我的信仰，与之紧紧相连的，是我坚信上帝创造并操纵着这个世界，使“任何人都不是独立的孤岛……”某一个人的欺诈会破坏所有人的正直。无论何处的道德沦丧了，都会造成整个社会的道德变质。我认为，只有诚实与道德才拥有真正的精神价值。

I believe the hope for a thoroughly honest and ethical society should never be laughed at. The most idealistic dreams have repeatedly forecast the future. Most of the things we think of today as hard, practical and even indispensable were once merely dreams.

我相信，永远不应嘲笑对构建拥有诚实与道德的社会的期望。最理想化的梦想往往预示着未来。如今我们觉得实在、实用甚至不可或缺的许多东西，曾经也只是梦想。

So I think to hope that the world need not be a dog-eat-dog jungle. I don't think I'm my brother's keeper. But I do think I'm obliged to be his helper. And that he has the same obligation to me.

因此，我希望这个世界不再是自相残杀的世界。我不认为自己是多管闲事的人。但我觉得自己有义务去帮助他人，就像他人有义务帮助我一样。

In the last analysis, the entire pattern of my life and belief can be found in the words "DO NOT do unto others that which you would NOT have others do unto you." To say "Do unto others as you would have others DO unto you" somehow implies bargaining, an offer of favor for favor. But to restrain from acts which you, yourself, would abhor is an exercise in will power that must raise the level of human relationship.

总而言之，“无论做什么，你希望别人如何待你，就要如何对待别人。”这句话正好涵盖了我的生活与信仰的全部。“要想别人如何待你，你也要如何对待别人。”暗示着礼尚往来的交易。然而，不做连自己都痛恨的事则是对意志力的一种磨练，这也会使人际关系有所改善。

"What is unpleasant to thyself," says Hillel, "THAT do NOT unto thy neighbor. This is the whole law," and he concluded, "All else is exposition."

希勒尔说：“己所不欲，勿施于人。这就是全部法则。”他还概括说：“余下的所有只是对其的阐述。”

英文美文励志小故事品析

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